The EA/DICE title Battlefield Heroes has had a bit of a long and winding road. From being ready to go, then only to be put on hold, and finally the release with a rather gradual, we’ll let anyone in beta. Back in September EA reported that the free-to-play title had passed the 2 million registered players mark, and all seemed well. Likewise, only a month prior, EA’s own senior analytics manager Rommy Ghaly revealed that on average, users spend around $20 in-game. Sounds fair, and all is fine and dandy in this free-to-play shooter n’est pas? Well….apparently not, as EA dropped the virtual bomb yesterday by announcing that the cost of in-game earned currency was going up, while at the same time, RMT (real money transaction) cost were to be lowered. In other words – earning currency by playing has fallen out of favor at EA, and cold hard cash income is coming to the forefront.

Announced on the forum, Battlefield Heroes price restructuring took effect on the 30th, and offers players incentives to purchase items using real money transactions to purchase the virtual currency BattleFunds, as opposed to the currency earned through play, Valor Points. In effect, EA has jacked up the cost of items purchased with Valor Points, while cut the cost of items purchased with BattleFunds by upwards of 50 percent.

But why? To find the answer to this, one might want to have a read through the 70+ page forum thread of players’ reactions. To say that they’re not pleased might be a bit of an understatement. However, if seen from EA’s position, they’ve got an interesting quandary on their hands now – one that can effect virtual economies if not properly planned. It seems as though EA has an imbalanced economy, in so much as players with plenty of time on their hands, ones that have acquired massive amounts of Valor Points through play, often have accounts with upwards of 20,000 points just sitting in the economy. Through not spending this currency, the in-game economy becomes unbalanced. To add to the headache, items purchased with said Valor Point are impermanent items which expire after a certain amount of time. Conversely, items purchased with BattleFunds are permanent items. In other words – those that spend real money for items have them forever, while earned currency buyers have advanced items for a pre-determined time period. The question is – will this change now upset game balance?

What’s also important to keep in mind here is that when Battlefield Heroes first arrived on the scene, they were the only free-to-play first person shooter on the market. Since then, competitors such as Nexon’s Combat Arms or Subagames’ Cross Fire have joined the free-to-play fps ranks. As expected, with the pricing change, a number of vocal players are irate, and have suggested that they’d rather move on to something else, rather than grind away for days on end to acquire items that previously only took a few hours to get. And while these vocal players often serve up empty threats, given the number of them (not counting those that have NOT voiced their opinions), a mass exodus is something that EA should be considering carefully before we see the once promising Battlefield Heroes dead in the water.